


Blackberries, Fairies, and You

by artisturtle



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/F, Lena and Kara Go Skywatching, Soft with a Slight Angst, no superpowers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-18
Updated: 2021-03-18
Packaged: 2021-03-27 08:34:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30120057
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/artisturtle/pseuds/artisturtle
Summary: She’s made so many mistakes and so many wrong turns in her life that she had conditioned herself that she must stick to the right. It makes her feel safe and secure. It doesn’t always spell happiness, but it makes her feel safer. But on this particular night, she swerves her steering wheel towards the left instead.
Relationships: Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor
Comments: 10
Kudos: 39
Collections: Star Gays





	Blackberries, Fairies, and You

**Author's Note:**

> Hi, everybody! I hope you are all doing good. Here's another SuperCorp piece I want to share with you. This is also a part of a collection I've started. I'd appreciate it if you leave comments and kudos behind. I hope you enjoy it!

The sky has been a blackberry-stained blanket for a while, the stars in the sky look like they’re slipping through the cracks and spilling their meager light as she makes her way back home. The drive from the suburbs seems to be longer than usual, it’s as if the road has been stretched like the elastic waistbands that she once wore, back in the day when she still didn’t know that the key to being beautiful is wearing her body like a skeleton.

Normally, she’d be halfway through her playlist. Tonight, she relishes in the silence.

Dinner with her adoptive mother had always been a challenge. They have never been close, not even when her father was still alive. Now that he’s gone, her mother has retreated into her shell, and she’s trying her hardest to smooth out the creases that her father’s death has left. She had to force herself to chew through her words and smile. It never got better anyway, not that she expects it to. Her mother’s not a strong woman, she is never a strong woman. 

Her mother is lonely. And so is she. She’s lonely.

Sometimes she feels like Lena Luthor and Lillian Luthor are so alike, despite them not sharing the same blood.

She knows she’s not supposed to admit things like these out loud, especially when she spends most of her life in the upper echelon of society. She should be happy but she feels like she’s waiting for something -- waiting for the mailman to come with good news, waiting for the sun to shine a little brighter, waiting for the stars to shed some more light.

But days go long and nights go cold and people have forgotten how to write letters.

Lena doesn’t know why, but when she was young she thought that she could grow up, grow wiser, maybe fall in love along the way and everything will just fall into place. Now she’s older and she knew things are different, but they’re all the same.

Lately, she finds herself wanting for some things - maybe someone, maybe a family of her own, maybe a reason to stay, maybe a reason to leave. She knows that love is not always enough to make people stay. She gave up on love long ago. She stays with her family because it’s the right thing to do.

She visits her mother every other Sunday because it’s the right thing to do. She visits her brother at National City Correctional every Monday afternoon because it’s the right thing to do. She leaves flowers on her father’s grave every Sunday morning before going to Lillian’s because it’s the right thing to do.

She’s made so many mistakes and so many wrong turns in her life that she had conditioned herself that she must stick to the right. It makes her feel safe and secure. It doesn’t always spell happiness, but it makes her feel safer.

The usual fork at the road appears down the road. She slows down as she prepares to make the turn, the bags of grocery rustles in the passenger seat. She turns her right blinker on, but when a light flickers in the distance, she swerves left. 

It’s the quickest decision she has ever made in her adult life, and something akin to doubt festers in her heart, but she ignores it as she steps on the gas pedal of her car, and instead of taking right her wheels peel towards the flickering light in the distance.

The light blinks at her. She blinks back.

She realizes it’s an airplane.

She’s seen a thousand of these things before, but tonight, this one feels different than all the others. She keeps following the light that’s constantly flickering like a beacon guiding her. Then the light disappears over the horizon, swallowed up by some mountaintops and treetops. Still, she steps on the gas pedal and continues to drive. The night wears on slowly for her. There’s nothing but the road behind and beyond her, but she doesn’t stop at all.

The sound of rubber scraping against the concrete roads is all that’s left singing to her as she advances through the weary night. She slips past sleeping towns without notice, the stars in the sky start their silent march across the heavens. Streetlamps take hold of her car like they’re lining up for a queue. When she makes a left turn to a road with white lines on each side, she lets go of a breath she has been holding for a long time.

Lena speeds down the desolate highway.

She tells herself that she has no fixed destination in her mind, that she doesn’t know what she’s doing or where she’s headed to. She tells this to the stars, to the streetlights, to the highway as she speeds down the road, over and over again for hours. She tells this to herself as she makes a left away from the highway. She tells this to herself even when she drives past a stop sign and into a residential neighborhood less than a mile away from the ocean and more than a thousand miles away from her penthouse and a lifetime away from her past.

The houses here are quiet, so unlike the big city that she had left behind. It takes a few seconds before her eyes could finally adjust to her surroundings, and she’s filled with an overwhelming sense of nostalgia as she realizes that everything looks the same in her childhood neighborhood.

And yet, everything is...not.

The lawns are still grassy and unkempt, looking like they've been unmowed for weeks. Hedges that need trimming line up around each of the lawns like they’re proud protesters barricading each territory they occupy. Some have a patch of concrete in between them leading to a blind alley, but even then the dark here seems to welcome her.

To her left, a single porch light flickers, very much like the light on the underside of the airplane a few hours ago. It beckons her like a beacon. It flickers once again, then flickers the third time - slightly longer than the first two.

She keeps watching as the rhythmic flickering goes on. She counts along with it. One-and-two, one-and-two, one-two-and-three. The porch light hums softly against the massive weight of the darkness. Her car slips quietly into the pebbled driveway that is lined with tall, neatly-trimmed marigold hedges. She turns off the engine and steps out of the car. Her steps are silent and sure as she walks the flagstone walkway leading to the house that she once grew up in.

She stands on the porch, the porch light blinking at her.

Lena blinks back.

“Can I help you?” a woman peeks out of the door, half of her body stepping out into the night. The woman is wearing a pink terry robe and a pair of glasses. She’s is slightly taller than she is, perhaps the same age as her, with a waterfall of blonde hair framing her face. There’s a smile on her face, even if there’s confusion in her eyes.

It’s the first time she realizes how crazy she must have looked, what with randomly showing up at people’s door. Her mind goes into haywire and the words are racing in her head but nothing comes out of her mouth.

“You look like you’re lost,” the woman says.

**_In a way, she really is lost._ **

“I...uh...I...was just around the neighborhood. I...I don’t know, but...” she flounders desperately, wringing her hands nervously in front of her. “...this is the house I grew up in. I didn’t...I didn’t mean it to be weird or anything. I’m sorry I didn’t mean to be a creep. I...I should go now. I’m...I’m sorry to barge in on...you and whatever.”

A soft smile blooms on the woman’s face before she fully steps out into the porch. “You used to live here?” she asks, her eyes and her voice betraying the softness of her smile. She sounds so giddy as if the idea that previous homeowners visiting their old houses in the middle of the night is a terrific, exciting idea.

“Uh...”

“I just moved here!” the woman says, her smile now transforming into a grin. "I left my job in the city, got a job here and I bought this house with all my savings and...and here we are now," she says, a flurry of her hand indenting the emphasis of her words.

She grimaces. No one in their proper inhibitions is  **this energetic** at one in the morning, jobless or not.

"Oh my, I forgot to tell you my name!" the blonde exclaims, extending a hand towards her. "My name is Kara, um...Kara Danvers. I start teaching at the community college in the fall," she says the last bit as if it’s something to be shy about, and she shyly ducks her head at the bit of information.

"Kara," she repeats, testing the name on her tongue. She decides that she likes the taste of Kara's name on her lips. "My name is Lena," she responds, and she firmly shakes the hand extended to her.

She takes note of how warm Kara's hand in hers is.

“Do...do you wanna come in?” Kara offers tentatively. “See if you can still recognize the place?”

She smiles, suddenly realizing how acutely close Kara is to her and realizing that she practically knows next to nothing about this blonde girl. Graciously as she could, she tries to take a step back. “I...it’s been a long time. Fifteen years, I assume the house may be different from what it was like years back. Besides, I couldn’t impose and...and your family might...”

“Oh, well Usher wouldn’t mind it if I have visitors around,” Kara waves her off. “He loves visitors!”

The question of whether the blonde’s husband would mind it or not almost pounces on her, and she catches herself before it gets out of her mouth. Kara leads her into the house, into the foyer dimly lit by warm yellow light, and the first thing she notices is that it feels like  **_home._ **

There’s a blur of gold fur, and before she realizes it, the biggest, fattest retriever she has ever seen her entire life is sitting right in front of her, a pink tongue lolling out from its mouth and black, beady eyes staring right at her and tail wagging and thumping on the hardwood floor.

“Ushy!” Kara calls out warningly. “I told you it’s not polite to lick people in the face!”

The warning comes too late. The behemoth has already latched its front paws on Lena’s thighs and started its attempt at slobbering all over her. The dog manages to land a few licks on her hand before Kara could even pry him away.

“Usher, how many times do I have to tell you?” Kara groans as she tells off the dog, but the dog looks like he cares not, and he trots to the den where he sits by the window and stares at the moon outside.

“Jesus Christ! I am so sorry,” Kara apologizes as she runs to the kitchen to grab the box of sanitizing wipes sitting above the fridge. “I’ve been trying to make him quit the habit of pouncing like a mad dog at people, but he always seems to be so eager around strangers,” she explains as she hands her the box.

“It seems like it,” she offers as she wipes her hands free of dog saliva. Taking a seat on the couch and glancing around, she realizes nothing has changed at all. The whole house had a new interior paint job, but the entirety of the house had remained the same -- furniture and fixtures; even the windows still hold the same frosted glass panelings. Even the couch looks the same. Whoever owned the house before Kara did had did a good job of keeping the house intact.

“I loved this couch,” she murmurs softly as she runs her fingers through the upholstery. It’s fairly new, but it looked just like the old one. “My mom and I used to watch our favorite hockey games here,” she explains to Kara, who’s leaning on the doorframe leading to the kitchen.

Kara’s face is somewhat unreadable, as though there’s something she wanted to find somewhere deep in the weight of her words. It makes her a little bit conscious, but Kara’s eyes soften slightly and a small smile graces her pink lips. “What’s your favorite part of the house, Lena?”

“Huh?”

“Your favorite place, in this house. You said this is your house before,” Kara asks.

“Oh...um...” she trails off faintly. She hadn’t really thought of that, but Kara is looking with puppy dog eyes and to deny the blonde an answer is like kicking a puppy into the dirt. She comes up with an answer pretty fast. “The backyard. My mom and I used to watch the stars there.”

“Then to the backyard, we shall go!” Kara says exuberantly as she raises a fist in the air, and she leads Lena into the back of the house as though she is a staunch general leading her one-man army to the battle of their lives.

Everything in the backyard remains the same.

The fire pit has gathered soil and dust and leaves, now overflowing with dense grass, but the stunted white cedar tree at the corner of the property still stands (although missing a few branches). She sits on the rickety bench on the porch and Kara sits next to her.

“I used to watch my mom make her art here, and when the afternoon sun just rests like this and hits it just right, I pretend that there are fairies around me and making the whole place golden," she tells Kara. "Then, when the sun goes down and the fireflies come out I pretend that these are my fairy friends."

Kara keeps an open face, her blue eyes holding her gaze with an intensity that shakes Lena to her core, but it's achingly familiar and she’d dare to say,  **_kindred._ **

"That's...that seems like a beautiful memory," Kara agrees, and Lena finds herself smiling.

"It is," Lena echoes and she chances to look up. 

The night sky is filled with stars, bits of light seeping through the black-ink sky. In the distance, she could see a stretch of silver dusted across the heavens. She’s never seen the sky so full of stars before, with all the city lights drowning the light coming from the sky.

"It's beautiful, isn't it?" Kara softly says. Gone is the energy waves bouncing off her, and it's now replaced with staunch calmness that feels both foreign and yet so familiar to Lena.

She lets out a long, drawn-out exhale. "Sometimes, I pretend my mother is among them, watching me."

“Oh,” is all that Kara offers -- and it’s that Lena takes.

“I was adopted,” Lena says by way of explanation. “My Dad got me when my mom died of cancer when I was nine and he took me in. When I turned ten, their birthday gift to me was in the form of adoption papers. Sure, I had a family to call as my own, and I am thankful for that, but it...it’s never the same.”

Kara’s blue eyes are trained on her -- open, unassuming, almost sleepy.

“I was adopted, too. I moved in with the Danvers when I was thirteen,” Kara finally says. “Sometimes, I think of my Mom up there, too.”

It’s unexplainable and weird, but Lena feels so safe when Kara’s hand envelopes her own. She lets out a rueful laugh, one that starts behind her throat and it gets out of her mouth unceremoniously. Kara looks at her, her dark-blonde brow raised in curiosity.

"What's so funny?"

Lena smiles. "Nothing," she says. "I just...I just feel like I practically know you."

"My sister always told me about this thing, about  _ Star People _ ," Kara trails off, her blue eyes picking out the brightest stars in the night sky. "She kept talking about this...connection you feel with someone else because you are more attuned to the frequency of their minds like you were made of the same star stuff. That's why your souls both feel so familiar with each other because your souls are essentially made up of the same stuff."

"I feel like your sister was talking about soulmates," Lena mutters, her tone even but the hand holding the blonde’s hand doesn't let go.

Kara snorts. "Would it even make a difference if it was called differently?"

"I guess not."

"So maybe we are, souls made of the same stuff, I mean to say," Kara says. "What are the chances of you standing at my front door at one in the morning?"

"Probably one in a million."

Kara smiles, and she bumps her shoulders against Lena's. "Here's to probably one in a million, then."

"You're a goofball," Lena groans.

They share a laugh, and Lena feels like it's a very long time since she has felt what laughter feels like. They look at the stars for some time until a barn owl hoots not far from them and it makes Lena jump out of her skin.

"Fucking hell!" she curses, and Kara doubles over, laughing. When she sees the laughter in Kara's eyes, she laughs too.

"You should stay the night," Kara offers. "I have a guest room you can crash in."

"You barely know my last name," Lena reminds her.

"Okay, so what's your last name?" Kara asks in a challenge.

It's an answer that she'd rather not give, but she shrugs it anyway. "Luthor. I'm Lena Luthor," she says; and she lets out a breath she didn't know she was holding when Kara doesn't bat an eye at the mention of her last name.

"Okay, so Lena Luthor, you can crash in my guest room if you want," Kara smiles in earnest. "It's late and you look like you're a long way from home. I'd feel better if you spend the night here and head out tomorrow morning."

It's how she ended up lying on the bed in Kara's guest room, wearing a set of Krusty Krab pajamas that don't belong to her and spending the entire night watching the lazy twirl of the ceiling fan above her head.

She must have fallen asleep sometime early in the morning because she vaguely remembers the pink glow of the eastern sky before blinking but when she opens her eyes again, sunlight is already spilling through every crack in the curtains.

She sleepily pads into the kitchen where someone is singing and she's suddenly back to being seven again, when her Mom, not Lillian but the hazy dreams of a woman she barely knows, is bent over the stove making her favorite breakfast: double waffles drizzled in maple syrup with a teaspoon of butter, cut fruit, a cup of warm milk and a side of bacon.

"Good morning, sleepyhead!" she hears Kara say as the woman pushes a plate in front of her.

She grins when she sees two waffles drizzled in corn syrup and slathered in butter, jammed blackberries, and four strips of bacon.

Her grin even grows impossibly wider when Kara puts a tall glass of warm milk on her right-hand side.

**(#)**

**Author's Note:**

> I am so very grateful that you read through this. I hope you liked it! If you did, leave a comment below and a kudos to let me know! Also, if you want, follow me on Twitter @artisturtle!


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